CAT BUTLER'S WEDDING
by la letra escarlata
Summary: Cat Butler is about to get married.


**CAT BUTLER'S WEDDING**

Katie Scarlett "Cat" Butler carefully slid her arms into the vaporous, silky sleeves to the wedding dress that her maids of honor were holding in front of her. Almost afraid that the delicate fabric of her wedding gown got ruined, she slowly put it on, fearful of hearing the horrible sound of the seams being torn down and the delicate and almost invisible stitches being ripped apart. The dress was such a magnificent work of art… Pity that she could only wear it once. Her father hadn't wanted to reveal to her the cost of this masterpiece she was wearing now. Daddy was always like that with her, always giving her the very best and only the very best, in spite of Mother's protests that she had married four times to three different men and had not worn once a brand-new wedding gown. Mother was especially bitter about the fact that not even for her last wedding had she had a gown exclusively designed and made for her. Her second wedding to daddy had been a kind of hurried affair in the Dublin town hall, with Mother wearing a brand-new, emerald green dress bought that very morning, just before sailing back to America. Even then her dress was neither a wedding gown nor a white dress, for it had been impossible to find one in such a short while after they had fled from Ballyhara the day before.

But, then, Mother had accepted with grace Daddy's generosity and had devoted all her energies to making of her youngest daughter's wedding the social event of the year in the city. After all, Wade Hampton had gotten married abroad and Ella's marriage, to a Jonesboro farmer Scarlett did not approve of, had been a simple ceremony followed by a rather plain luncheon organized, with an utter lack of taste, by the mean Aunt Suellen. Therefore, it was not a matter of wonder that Scarlett had taken the success of Cat's wedding as a personal matter and an issue of pride.

'You look so beautiful, sister,' Ella told her, standing next to her.

This physical proximity made the remarkable differences between the two half-sisters much more noticeable. While Ella was short and rather plump, as befitted the matronly wife of a farmer and the mother of five unruly children, all as ginger-haired as herself, Cat was slender, a head taller and had inherited the silky dark hair and emerald green eyes of their mother as well as her white magnolia complexion. From her father Cat had inherited her broad grin and their characteristic laughter, as many people had remarked over the years.

Cat hugged Ella. The two sisters had never really been too close, with Ella living at Tara and Cat constantly traveling around the world with her parents until they had eventually settles down here, in Charleston, almost three and a half years ago, after Grandmother Butler's death. It was then when Daddy had decided he felt like returning to his roots and, fortunately, Mother had discovered that the city now was much more open-minded and less stiff that it was when she had last lived here right before she and Daddy got divorced.

Of course, with their permanent move to Charleston, there were things that Cat, fifteen year old at the time, had to be explained and told. For instance, that while she had lived with Mother in Ireland, a place she now could hardly remember except in her dreams, Daddy had stayed in Charleston, gotten married, become a respectable citizen and lost his wife and son in childbirth. It had come as a shock to learn all these shocking pieces of information. Naturally, she knew that there had been a time, while in Ireland, when Mother and she had lived alone, without Daddy and that then Daddy had come to their rescue during the Ballyhara riots and since then it had no longer been just she and Mother but Daddy had been also with them. She knew that much and also that Daddy and Mother had first been married in Atlanta and had a little girl called Bonnie who had died from a horse fall and then they had gotten a divorced just before she was born. That Mother had been married twice before and had had two children who lived in America and whom Cat saw once in a blue moon was no secret for her either. But she had never heard a word prior to their coming to Charleston about Daddy having been married to another woman too, and that while she and Mother fended for themselves in the O'Hara lands!

Fortunately, it had all happened so long ago that the rumors had long died down and nobody in Charleston ever made any nasty remark about it to Cat. Yet, she knew that many people in the city still remembered when Mother had left Daddy without an explanation when the season ended and when she had first returned to visit old Mrs. Butler several years later, with a four-year-old Cat in her arms and being Mrs. Butler again. Yes, the old stories might not be openly mentioned any more but they were certainly still remembered.

Ella spent a few more minutes wishing her half-sister all the happiness in the world before retiring. She had left her insufferable red-haired children with her husband and she was afraid they might be wreaking havoc downstairs. At least Ella could be here today. Wade, who now lived in Ireland with his half-Irish wife and their six (and counting) kids, had been unable to come. He was now the manager of Mother's lands in Ballyhara and he hardly ever came back to the United States. Daddy, who had spent so much of his own life roaming the world, far from home, thought it was a pity that the family was so distant but Mother seemed perfectly fine with it. Cat suspected that part of the reason of Mother's detachment was that it didn't sit well with her being the grandmother of eleven brats.

However, Mother was still beautiful, Cat reflected as she came into the room, wearing an exquisite dress of brocade.

'My little girl,' Scarlett said, taking out a lace handkerchief that already was soaking wet.

'It's all right, Mother,' Cat tried to console her. Mother had not dropped a single tear when Wade and Ella got married, not even when her only son moved to Ireland but today she was inconsolable.

'My baby is leaving me,' she sobbed.

'But Mother, Richard and I are just moving two blocks away,' she tried to reason with her.

It had been lucky that an elegant, twelve-room house so close to the Butler family house had been put up for sale just two weeks after Richard had asked Daddy for her hand. The house had been Daddy's wedding gift to her, even though Richard at first had protested a little bit. He was doing pretty well at the bank where he worked, despite Daddy's insistence that he go to work for the shipping company he had founded when they moved to Charleston. Richard, however, although he had politely turned down all of Daddy's requests, had told her that he was adamant in never working for his father-in-law. He had attended university and his prospects at the bank were excellent; he didn't want anybody in town to believe that he owed his job to his family connections or, even worse than that, that he had married Cat Butler with an eye on Rhett Butler's fortune. No, Richard was a proud man and he wanted to do things on his own. He had eventually accepted the house as their wedding gift but he put his foot down about the job. And, moreover, Daddy didn't really need Richard's help to run the company. It was running well enough under Daddy's constant supervision, even if he no longer went to their commercial offices on a daily basis and, anyway, by the time Daddy eventually retired, Gerry would be ready to take the company over.

Cat smiled as she remembered her thirteen-year-old little brother, always so full of mischief. His arrival, three years after their parents' second wedding, had been a complete surprise for all of them but also a source of joy. Always smiling and inventing some prank or another, Cat was sure that by now he would be already thinking of some practical joke to play on the wedding guests, in spite of Daddy's threats that he would skin him alive if he got in trouble today.

'Mother, please, don't cry,' she asked.

'Come on, Scarlett, don't ruin the girl's wedding day,' Rhett said, as he entered the bedroom, perfect in his brand-new, tailor-made gray suit.

'Don't try and spoil my moment,' Rhett. After all, one only marries once and this is our little girl's wedding.'

Rhett raised one eyebrow.

'Only once, my dear?', he chuckled.

'Oh, Rhett Butler, you're impossible,' she said and playfully hit him on his left arm with her gloves.

'Ready, Cat? All the guests are already waiting for you.'

'Yes, Daddy,' she said, and took the arm that her father offered her, ready to get downstairs and be married to the man she loved.

**~THE END~**


End file.
